Science: Inventions

Last week the U. S. Patent Office, making its annual report, signaled
distress. It would have to have more employes, larger quarters, greater
appropriations. The nation's inventive genius, or more accurately the
national penchant for protecting inventive genius, had increased
until there was a patent application filed for every thousandth
inhabitant110,000 in a year. The Office found itself with 58,000
applications still on the docket, despite its having cleared up 35,000
hangovers from the last three years. For the first time in history, the
Office had felt obliged to rid itself of its...